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Harmony ONE is a great ecosystem, I'm currently earning 11 - 12% staking my ONE and also using ONE to mint NFTs on Da Vinci (My NFT Gallery), and have been keen to try out other things within the ecosystem and gotten involved with DeFi with ViperSwap & LootSwap.
But what about the basic staking, how does it work, what's the risk, and how do you choose a validator?
You can stake by using the Harmony Chrome extension, and connecting to staking.harmony.one , or you can use a mobile wallet such as Blits, Guarda, Math or Trust (via Frontier). You can also use a Ledger Nano S, the Nano X is not currently supported but it should hopefully be an option in future as it has been confirmed by both Harmony and LEDGER that its being worked on.
My preference is for the Blits mobile wallet, with the seed phrase imported into the Chrome extension so I have the best of both. The main benefit to both is that if you want to switch your ONE to a different delegator, currently with Blits you need to unstake (which takes 5 - 7 days), whereas with the Chrome extension you can switch at the end of the current epoch, usually less than 24hrs.
The safest is to use the Ledger Nano S as a cold wallet.
What's the risk?
Almost zero risk, in theory if a validator acted maliciously then there could be slashing of ONE tokens, it hasn't happened so far that I am aware of, but its a reason to choose a trusted validator with care.
How do I claim and how often should I claim?
You can claim whenever you like, rewards are earned after the first epoch, if you have a small amount staked you can only see full numbers, so it may take a few days to show anything. You need to ensure you leave a small amount in your wallet to pay gas fees, they are tiny (like 0.0001 ONE) but its a good idea to leave 1 ONE in your wallet to cover multiple claims.
There is no real benefit to claiming unless you can restake, so I claim every time I buy more ONE and am adding to my staked amount, and add the rewards to this, or I would claim when I reach the minimum amount to stake on its own, which is currently 1000 ONE but will be reduced soon to just 100 ONE which will make compounding easier.
How do I choose a validator?
There are several factors to take into account, uptime (you want to make sure they have as close to 100% as possible), size (decentralisation works best when smaller validators are supported), current reward % (this will be fairly consistent - those with significantly higher % are often only for one epoch as as they become elected), fees % (more on this later) and activity in the community.
Reward % will vary between around 9 - 12%, currently its close to 11%
% fees - these are taken from the reward itself, so it costs you nothing but you get a slightly lower reward - i.e if you were to get 100 ONE as a reward, with 5% fees the validator would keep 5 and you would get 95. You may find a validator with 0% fees but is not online as reliably or becomes unelected in which case your overall reward may be lower. Only new validators will have 0% fees, as it is mandatory to charge a minimum 5% fees after a certain number of epochs, and chasing 0% fees can end up costing you more as you will lose 1 epochs rewards when switching as a minimum.
Some validators are very active on Reddit, Telegram etc.. which gives more transparency and the ability to ask questions and understand how the system works and if there are any problems with the network as a whole.
My recommendations for validators:
StrongMindsHold - moderator on Harmony ONE Reddit and has a Telegram chat specifically to communicate with delegators. Really helpful, great community member and highly recommended.
Slugom.One - very involved with technical side, very helpful - especially to other validators - smaller validator so staking here helps decentralisation.
If you are spreading your bag further consider also these other options:
RockTheBlockChain - Also Harmony ONE Reddit mod
Wellness.one - Harmony ONE Reddit mod, also donates a % of validator proceeds to charity
Maffaz.one - writer of this even more detailed staking guide
SnacksFighter - active in community
There are many other excellent validators, this is just a selection, do your own research and spend some time in the community and you'll see many are active in helping newbies and answering questions, and if you have a favourite not listed above, drop the name in the comments to show them some love!
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This is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor, nor am I an accountant. Do your own research before making any investments or tax decisions.
